Tag: publishing

Reblogging Margaret McCaffrey: From Paperbacks to E-Readers and Beyond

People reading and studying with a humanoid robot in a futuristic library
Booksmaxxing
from Writings & Musings of Margaret McCaffrey

I started drafting this reblog of Margaret McCaffrey’s most recent blog post earlier this morning and observed that the scope of AI assistance on WordPress has increased significantly and very quickly. In a short video, a WordPress Happiness Engineer talks about the possible uses of AI Agents on the platform. You can ask an AI Agent to redesign your website, or email the agent with your thoughts and requests. Or chat to them on Telegram or Slack (when did Slack arrive on the scene!).

In the video, the WordPress rep shares an image of a yoga studio. They demonstrate how you might ask AI to insert a sleeping cat onto one of the vacant mats in the studio. They draw an arrow and type something like ‘insert cat here’ and voila! a cat appears amid the handful of people. But who’s to say that the humans in the pic are real and not generated, or even that the studio isn’t simply the outcome of an earlier prompt? And that cat didn’t look particularly convincing! And then I thought: How do we even know that the Happiness Engineer delivering this tutorial is a real person. And does it matter. And is that a question or a rhetorical flourish?

And suddenly … well, I’d entered a philosophical hall of mirrors. What started with AI developments on WordPress ended up in distraction, somehow colliding with epistemological questions about truth and knowledge, then ontological questions about what intelligence and creativity even are, and eventually existential questions about what all of this means for us as humans …

It was time to get back to the reblog. Margaret’s post, linked at the top, touches on these very things: It starts out by musing on traditional versus digital books, paper versus pixels, and ends up beginning to consider the implications of AI for creativity.

And so, without further ado, let’s hit the ‘Publish’ button.

Time for a coffee and a Ginger Nut.

Happy reading,

EW

Currents: What I’m working on, by Helen McDonald

In recent weeks I have been aware of a light tap-tapping on my shoulder, sporadic but consistent, that I’ve been trying to ignore. Waving it away like a bothersome fly, I finally began to tune in after receiving my fifth, albeit encouraging, rejection from a literary journal. 

I hasten to add that I have been fortunate enough to have had a number of my poems published, in Australia and overseas, so I know that the tap on my shoulder is not a gentle suggestion to pack away my pens and give it all up. My thinking has changed from the years when a ‘no’ from a publication would send me into a spiral of rejection with thoughts of ‘I’ll never be good enough!’ My mantra now, thanks to experience and the unwavering support of Elwood Writers, is: ‘this poem hasn’t found a home yet’. I’ve come to realise that it can all come down to a suitable ‘fit’ – whether the publisher or journal editor can find a place for this particular poem. It might not complement other work chosen for the collection, or indeed may not be what the editor has in mind. Of course we won’t always hit the jackpot. I’m jostling for recognition in a field of highly talented and creative poets. The way I write won’t appeal to everyone, and – this is an important point – one editor might love the piece, while another won’t be moved at all. In many cases it comes down to an individual’s choice.

I think the message I’m now receiving from the universe, is maybe it’s time to step back and reflect on exactly what I have been saying for all these years. I write because I have to and there’s always more to say.  It’s my way of making sense of where I fit into the whole chaotic turbulence that is life. Affirmation is incredibly important to all artists, but so too is trusting in oneself. 

So I’m taking time now to gather my poems into a collection that will say: this is me – my work, my thoughts. This is how I navigate this world. And I hope to learn something about myself along the way.